


big girls (don't) cry

by sandinista



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frozen Four, Gen, even for caretakers who are purportedly more in touch with others' feelings, heck ESPECIALLY FOR THEM, sports are cruel and unyielding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandinista/pseuds/sandinista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There ain’t nothin’ wrong with being sad sometimes, sweetheart.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” you say, so positive this is nonsense, the kind of things adults tell kids when they’re all scared of hard things, “but there ain’t nothin’ wrong with wanting to make it go away faster neither.”</p>
<p>(OR: Eric Bittle may well be a professional at taking care of his friends, but he could use some lessons on taking care of himself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	big girls (don't) cry

**Author's Note:**

> god, i can't believe that my first fic contribution to this fandom is a second person mess of feelings and heartbreak, but _here we are._ i didn't think that a comic about baking pies and kegsters would tear me apart, either, but i'm very grateful that it did.
> 
> as per the whiplash emotions engendered in _last game_ , this sucker has been written in a blur and unbeta'd. mea culpa in advance. ngozi, should you ever read this: thank you dearly for making such a thing that can fill us with joy and make us ache, because that means you've made something human here, and that is so beautiful and precious.
> 
> title is equal parts a nod to _big girls don't cry_ by frankie valli and the four seasons and _big girls cry_ by sia. guess which one would be in j.l. zimmermann's playlist on his computer and which one would be on e.r. bittle's?

You first learn this at six years old, your mama’s hand around yours as your daddy’s team rubs their eyes in the stadium and goes down under the bleachers to the locker room, the breath knocked out of ‘em. Red and gold never seemed so sad, but there ain’t a dry eye in the great sea of maroon and goldenrod as you shimmer back to your cars, a great flood of humanity whose hearts are full to break.

Your daddy’s on the bus with his boys, so you and your mama drive home and y’all are mostly in silence with the radio piping between you, but there’s a point between Atlanta and home when you say, “Is daddy gonna be okay?”

“He’ll be alright, Dicky,” your mama whispers, but that voice of hers betrays herself and she steadies her hands on the wheel. “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with being sad sometimes, sweetheart.”

“Sure,” you say, so positive this is nonsense, the kind of things adults tell kids when they’re all scared of hard things, “but there ain’t nothin’ wrong with wanting to make it go away faster neither.”

Your mama don’t laugh, your mama don’t even smile. Instead, she sighs and y’all just nod and look ahead into the dark until you drift off into the night.

When you wake up, there’s voices downstairs and you can’t help but peek because there’s a big rumble at the foot of it, slow and deep and resigned.

“Y’all did _so good_ , honey,” you pick up from your mama when you sit at the foot of the stairs. “Y’all did the best you could, Richard, and you can’t take that away from them.”

“They just—those boys, Suzanne,” your daddy sighs, and there’s something to the slump of his shoulders as he sighs that hints to something you can’t put into words then, that you can’t mould into sense, “they gave everything on that turf. They gave Williams everything, they gave Besh everything, and they sure as hell gave _me_ everything. And,” your daddy says in a voice you’ve never heard before and you’ll hardly hear since, full of shaking and hoarseness, “we just couldn’t carry ‘em across the line, Suz. We just couldn’t carry them across the—”

There’s something that rips in you and you just can’t take it anymore, you can’t just sit here and listen to your papa’s heart rip out, so you’re sprinting down the stairs and flinging your arms around his knees, because you can’t do anything else but it sure as h-e-double hockey sticks is better than staying all breathless against the bannister.

“Eric Richard Bittle, you’re supposed to be in _bed_ ,” your mama scolds, but your daddy just shifts against your embrace, and before you know it there’s his hands along your back and you fling your arms around his neck because by gum, you know that there ain’t nothing better than a good old hug when you feel like the bottom’s done gone out of you.

“Dicky,” your daddy sighs, his hand patting through your hair, and you only hug the harder.

“You’re the best coach I know,” you say, because even now _I love you_ feels funny when either of you say it, “and those boys from Athens are a buncha buttheads.”

He chuckles, just a little, and gives you an extra squeeze.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

The thing about being in figure skating is that you lose by yourself, and you don’t know it then but this will be ingrained into you for the rest of your life.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

Playing in teams is an adjustment for you.

It’s not a bad one – cooperation and teamwork is built into your bones, if your mama had anything to do with it – but it’s an adjustment nevertheless. You have to figure out your role, your place. You can’t assume that your gifts alone can help attribute to success; instead, it’s figuring out who you can dovetail with best to compliment the collective goal. There’s the heady intoxication that comes with sharing your successes, that realizing the incredible impossibility that so many bodies can become one body, one sweep, one shot through the pipes that erupts into a convulsive roar. 

And then there’s losing together, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Your first loss, you’re stone silent in the passenger seat and your mama doesn’t even try to put on WPUP to soothe the edges of your hunch as you tuck your knees into your chest. She doesn’t even tell you to put your feet down like a gentleman, nor are you remembering your manners much, which frankly should be a bit of a red flag but there you are. Your mama just does you the kindness of allowing the countryside to pass by, but she can’t stay that silent for long.

“Honey,” she says quietly, “you were bound to lose eventually.”

“That ain’t it,” you say, because you’ve been an athlete all your life, this isn’t your first rodeo, and you hug your knees harder.

Your mama stops at the stoplight, places a hand to your back. “Then what is it, Dicky?” 

“What do you do,” you say finally, “when it ain’t really your fault but it’s not _not_ your fault, neither?”

“It’s just like in Juniors, baby,” she says with a tweak to the apple of your cheek. “You take a moment to breathe and then you think about what you can do better next time.”

“But,” you say after a while, after you really consider the gospel in your mama’s voice and how it’s singing clearer than anything else could be right then, “what do you do when it ain’t your friends’ fault neither? What then?”

“You love them, sweetheart,” your mama says, her voice so grave, “just like I love you.”

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

The first time this happens, you’re too sick to do anything.

The second time, when you’re healthy as a horse, it feels far worse.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

Taking the C is a vow you hold in your heart, and you tell Justine as much when you put on your jersey for the first time after the vote, the white letters popping off against the green. She smiles that way that she does when you say something that she finds cute and a little silly, endearing even, and you roll your eyes because it ain’t a game, it’s gospel. Watching your daddy taught you that much.

You find that leadership is best served through a servant model: be the model player you want your team to be, and support everyone every step of the way. You’re the first one at practice and the last one out of the rink, and you talk to the coaches about little hiccups along the way. Your friends at school say _hey, you know it’s just club, right?_ and you hear _hey, you know it ain’t football?_ and you refused to be bothered, because for your team, it ain’t “just” anything.

When you first started playing in this club, it wasn’t too good. Thing was, it wasn’t too bad either, and there’s something about being straight in the middle that fills you and your teammates with the type of gumption that makes you hungry. By the time you get that C, they’re starting to settle things on your shoulders that are silent and heavy: _you think we can get to Sweet 16? Out from AA to A?_ And every time you see your friends scream after the clock sounds, arms wound round necks and shoulders, their teeth flashing into the bright lights, you think _why the heck not?_

But. There’s always a but.

First: your star left winger, Aimee, goes and breaks her foot around February. It ain’t her fault, but she wears it around her shoulders like it’s a garland every time she shows up to practice. “It’s awful, Eric,” she tells you the second week in, “every time I see y’all on the ice.”

“It ain’t your fault,” you say, and you hope the hand on her shoulder helps mediate that canned tone in your voice. “Nobody goes an’ says, ‘I’m gonna go get injured on purpose,’ you know that.”

“Don’t help that it sucks,” she grumbles at her hands, and you squeeze her shoulder.

“Listen, sweetheart, you go and tell me what pie you like and I’m not saying that it might help you get better faster, but I’m not about to say that it _won’t_ either.”

Then your defensemen have a falling out. You’ll realize later, when you’re in the north with frost in your hair and a spread of frogs in front of you waiting to get mothered, that this ain’t nothing. But when both of your pairs of d-men just don’t want to talk none, it makes your goalie work twice as hard. Four times, even, given there ain’t much of a relief. And you mediate. And you sigh. And you bargain. And you sigh. And you ask the coaches to help, because you are at the goshdarned end of your _rope_.

Passes aren’t connecting. You do team-building. You find your shots are off-goal more than they are on. You go through stick-handling drills in that space between when your team goes and Coach is tapping at the glass. Your fourth line gets the flu. Your coaches reassign every combination until the team dynamic barely resembles what you started with. The seniors start to grumble. You desperately, breathlessly wonder if you were the right choice at all.

“Coach,” you say one Friday before a roadie, eating your pancakes at the kitchen table, “you ever have problems with getting your boys to behave on the field?”

“What d’y’mean, exactly, Junior?” is the reply, and you realize this: your daddy’d never tolerate anything less than obedience in his life.

“Wrong words, I um.” You rub your neck. You pull for the incoherence of this struggle that you’re trying to suss out in your heart. And then: “Some teams are more championship than others, y’know? And some teams work together better than others, y’know?”

“I reckon,” he says, which is as close to _I follow_ as your daddy done gonna get.

“But those teams that are champions, they ain’t built overnight.” You cut a wedge out of your pancake, ninety degrees, and you can't help but think of Moomaw's hand guiding yours through slicing the first pecan pie you ever made. “They didn’t walk into the locker room ready to become a unit. You had to build them, and your quarterback did too.”

“Right,” Coach says, nodding. It’s the first time he’s looked at you, you feel like, in weeks.

“So how you get there, then?” You stare at that pancake. You stare at it like it’s your life’s God-given task, hell or high water. “How d’ya make ‘em talk?”

“Sounds like they’re forgettin’ the goal, Junior,” Coach says, settling his coffee on the table. “Sounds like your team forgot what they gotta be hungry for.”

“I reckon,” you say, but it doesn’t seem as easy as that. It does, however, seem like a wedge of the problem.

But then again, maybe some teams just ain’t championship material compared to others.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

A truth universally acknowledged: Jack Laurent Zimmermann’s shoulders are broader than God Himself.

A lesser truth that even Jack Laurent Zimmermann seems to gloss over: large though they are, they still ain’t big enough to carry an entire team’s defeat, but maybe if you square your shoulders into his, you’ll be able to make ‘em just wide enough.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

It’s almost worse, when there’s charisma but you’re just short of your goal, you realize too late. You watch the line of their jaws as your girls on second line just watch the puck whizz past Tomlinson into the net for the third time in the shoot-out and the siren blazes. 

_We’re out,_ you process, suspended in the middle of the ice as Alpharetta spins past you to pile on top of themselves, breathless in a way that you’ll never be with this team ever again. Marcus skates up behind you and places a hand on your shoulder, soft and steady, and the blush that usually creeps up ‘round your neck is quiet now, quiet like the world is quiet, for the force of the blood rushing through your ears is deafening enough.

“Hell of a way to end your career, Cap,” he whispers, tucking you aside him as he skates you to the boards. 

“Signed up north with a team, so not quite,” you mutter despite yourself. He squeezes and your heart squeezes, too.

“Don’t forget us up there,” he says while you two are walking towards the locker room, and it’s funny coming out of Marcus’s mouth like that, echoing in the halls. 

“I would _never_ ,” you spit out and Marcus laughs and laughs and laughs. This is why the team voted him A, why when they two of you enter the briefing room later after y’all are tidied up, the entire team looks to you.

“More like you better not forget _me_ , Marcus O’Shea,” and the way he smiles at you, you are almost convinced that he won’t.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

You learn this at nineteen years old, the moonlight flooding into your bedroom, tongue bit and fists balled as you curl in on your pillow and your rabbit so that no one can hear you cry: there ain’t nothin’ wrong with being sad sometimes, but you probably shouldn’t be alone. And yet, so it goes.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

 

You’re on the way back to the locker room, a hand to Jack’s back because he needs it, you can tell, even if he can’t. And he looks down at your squared jaw, chin raised, and you wonder if he’s purposefully trying to break your goshdarned heart.

“Bittle,” he says, that accent too much right now, “ça va?”

You don’t need a translation as your laugh rings through the concrete underground, too high, too sharp, too bitter, and you move that hand to clap him on the shoulder for emphasis. 

“Naw Jack, haven’t you heard? Big girls don’t cry.”

**Author's Note:**

> i will atone for my sins in this fandom with a buddy-with-benefits stoner comedy starring shits and lards the next time i post. until then, i make bad internet decisions at hockeydumpster dot tumblr dot com.


End file.
